The Pankration
The combination of boxing and wrestling known as the pankration was a development of the primitive rough and tumble.
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From “The Pankration” in Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals by Edward Norman Gardiner, 1910.
The combination of boxing and wrestling known as the pankration was a development of the primitive rough and tumble. To get his opponent down, and by throttling, pummelling, biting, and kicking, to reduce him to submission, is the natural instinct of the savage or the child. But this rough and tumble was too undisciplined for athletic competition.
Competitions require law, and in the growth of law the simpler precedes the more complex. Hence it was only natural that particular forms of fighting such as boxing and wrestling should be systematized first, and so made suitable for competition, before any attempt was made to reduce to law the more complicated rough and tumble of which they both formed part.
Wrestling and boxing were known to Homer, but not the pankration, and Greek tradition was following the natural order of development in assigning the introduction at Olympia of wrestling to the 18th, of boxing to the 23rd, and of the pankration to the 33rd Olympiad. In the pankration as in boxing the contest continued till one or other of the parties held up his hand in sign of defeat.
At Sparta, where for this reason the laws of Lycurgus forbade citizens to compete in these events, the primitive rough and tumble unrestricted by law and unrefined by science was allowed and encouraged as a test of endurance and a training for war. The pankration at the great festivals was something quite different; it was governed by the law of the games, and was, at all events in the best period, a contest no less of skill than of strength.
Modern writers turn up their eyes in holy horror at the brutality of the pankration, and marvel that a race so refined as the Greeks could have tolerated so brutal a sport. Undoubtedly the pankration might degenerate into brutality, and perhaps sometimes actually did. So may football, boxing, wrestling, unless they are controlled by rules, and unless the rules are enforced.
But the pankration was controlled by rules, and the rules were enforced in the wrestling school and in the games by trainers and officials under public control, and enforced with the rod in a practical way which the modern umpire or referee may well envy, and the rod was certainly not spared.
Further, the rules were enforced by a public opinion and tradition that in the best times certainly placed skill and grace far above brute strength in all athletics. No branch of athletics was more popular than the paukration. Philostratus describes it as the fairest of all contests. Mythology ascribed its invention to Heracles and Theseus, the typical representatives of science as opposed to brute strength. What the pankration was in the fifth century we can learn from Pindar. No less than eight of his odes are in praise of pankratiasts, and from these odes can be illustrated every feature of the poet's athletic ideal.
There was, of course, an element of danger, but danger does not make a sport brutal. Serious injuries, even loss of life, sometimes occurred, but these accidents were rare, rarer probably than in football or in the hunting-field, and the Greeks certainly regarded the pankration as less dangerous than boxing. Finally, the example of jiujitzu proves that such contests may be conducted without any brutality as contests of pure skill.
The fullest account of the pankration occurs in Philostratus' description of the death of Arrhichion, a famous pankratiast of the sixth century, who expired at the very moment when his opponent acknowledged himself beaten. After describing the scene and the excitement of the spectators, Philostratus adds a characteristic account of the Pankration.
"Pankratiasts," he says, "practise a hazardous style of wrestling. They must employ falls backward which are not safe for the wrestler, and grips in which victory must be obtained by falling. They must have skill in various methods of strangling; they also wrestle with an opponent's ankle and twist his arm, besides hitting and jumping on him, for all these practices belong to the pankration, only biting and gouging being excepted. The Spartans admit even these practices, but the Eleans and the laws of the games exclude them, though they commend strangling."
It would be difficult to give a more concise description. Wrestling, hitting, and kicking are employed; the style of wrestling is hazardous; victory is usually obtained by strangling; biting and gouging are alone prohibited. The prohibition of gouging and biting is evidently a quotation from the actual rules of Olympia. It is twice quoted by Aristophanes. Biting needs no comment. The meaning of the word translated "gouging" is clear from Aristophanes. It means digging the hand or fingers into the eyes, mouth, and other tender parts of the body. A vivid illustration of "gouging" occurs on a British Museum kylix (Fig, 151).
One of the pankratiasts has inserted his thumb and finger into his opponent's eye as if to gouge it out, and the official is hastening up with his rod uplifted to interfere and punish such foul play. A somewhat similar scene is represented on a kylix in Baltimore (Fig. 152), where a pankratiast inserts his thumb into the mouth of an opponent whom he has thrown head over heels.
Gardiner, Edward Norman. Greek Athletic Sports and Festivals, MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1910.
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